CRASH DOCUMENT

The night had been fitful, devoid of even a moment’s sleep, though not for lack of trying. Attempts were made, time aided in its restless passage by the help of a good book. Books are eternal best friends of an insomniac though, more often than not, also the reason for sleep’s evasiveness. 
The night in question was just such an example. Even though the plot moved at the pace of molasses, the words were strung together with such meaning and intent that, despite my sorry attempt to sleep without the aid of the pills I rely on, those troubles became irrelevant for a moment in face of words I struggled to digest. However, sleep, rest, eternity, redemption, all remained miles away from where I lay reading. Books with messages of hope easily convince me, they are like drugs, but, like drugs, their messages of inspiration fade and disappear. I then seek out new books with stronger messages. Sometimes I yearn for something boring in a book to help me sleep, but, mostly I find very little that is written to be boring, so reading becomes just another obstacle to reaching the contentment of sleeps oblivion.

Sleep is the reason I am here in the Pantai Mas healing centre in Lovina on the north coast of Bali. To be more precise a lack of sleep is why I am here. Years of binge partying and Dj-ing clubs all over the world, till well into mornings, combined with constant travel, gangster boogy, time zone changing, 5 star room service abuse and rock and roll life style made it simpler to take a pill to sleep, than try to rely on the circadian rhythms that nature, at one time, used to provide. Very little about my lifestyle had elements of the natural world in it. I play electronic music favored by people on chemicals in environments of un-organically enhanced sensory over stimulation.

Basically I have spent the last decade blasting techno music to the drug deranged masses in clubs at hours when all things natural should be fast asleep. I have slept very little, sometimes not at all, for days on end. More times than I can count I have lost track of days, months, years and even which country I was in. The discovery of a pill that could put me to sleep when sleep was completely unobtainable felt like finding the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. 
I became more efficient, more reliable less shattered by the ever-increasing pace of my career, by ignoring the ever-increasing age of my body. It was the perfect solution, soma in a bottle, I could show up fresh whenever I wanted, or not, but with the confidence that whatever I needed, sleep, energy, peace or power lay there to taken, just a handful away. The pills allowed me to become an Olympic athlete of debauchery, the harbinger of chaos coming to rip the backside out of whatever club beckoned, to operate in any state imaginable, without fail, without remorse yet retain some semblance of sanity. A class A samurai on a kamikaze mission to rock the whole party so hard it felt assaulted by my enthusiasm!!

Fast-forward ten years. I am not playing so much now or partying half as hard, trips are few and farther between, life is making its organic progression towards maturity. Now married with hopes of family in my sight, I am seeking healing from the years of use and abuse I have inflicted upon myself. It's the way the world works, you can only blame life so much before it simply is simpler to be in love, happier to be at home, happiest to have a home and find in it…love. I fought against growing up like a child fighting the inevitability of bedtime but, in the end, some greater power made me happy to lose that battle. 
Only problem is I still cannot sleep without my magic pills. By now there are dozens of different types, all with essential properties and custom designed for just the right situations. One for short bursts of sleep with very little tail (drowsiness) when you wake, another that will put you down in fifteen minutes even after you just finished blasting half of Bolivia up your nose. Others still great in combination, a light fast acting pill to bring the onset of sleep quickly, teamed up with a slower longer lasting downer that, once working, would keep you under for a good 8 hours - might leave you a wee bit zombie-like for some hours after waking (though nothing strong coffee couldn't almost disguise). 
Each little tablet of induced bliss comes neatly packaged in a plethora of colors, so accessible in their candy like appearance yet so insidious in the way they disarm the bodies basic instinct against poisoning itself. As the spiral grew ever more concentric circles of addiction, I found pills could replace alcohol, could kill pain before it struck, increase energy when none should rightfully be available, or suppress it when there was more than was manageable. Pills would take the edge off anything else that might be offered, purchased, begged or borrowed in the interest of getting the job done, having the most fun, being asleep in time to wake up rested enough to do it all again. 
This of course is loosely phrased hyperbole for coke, speed, ecstasy, mdma, dmt, 4atp, 2cb, lsd, 5htp, mescaline, yaba, shabu, ketamine. shake, weed, skunk, glass, smack, gooey, ghb or any number of other substances routinely imbibed, offered, over- dosed or mistakenly swallowed on any given night in any given country, in any given club on all the travels both remembered or forgotten, taken like an unknown rock star on a flying carpet no one else could see.

Hopefully those last few facts give a sense of how honest I now want to be, and we can return to Bali, Pantai Mas, to where I had ridden on my new motorbike to be healed of my sleeping pill addiction. All other substances mentioned are bits and pieces of the past, the foundation of my only current addiction is the sleeping pills I use to make everything else stop.

The bike in mention is a Yamaha MT 01. Its purchase included a suit of high-density nylon lined throughout with Kevlar, hard plastic amour to protect all the essential regions of the body, needed in the event that the 1700 cc, 100 Hp, digitally monitored super bike were to fall over, crash, tip or stray off the given path while being ridden. On top of the suit I have ankle high leather boots with reinforced impact points, 5 layer gloves with bullet proof knuckles and a 1000 dollar full face helmet that fits like a climbing shoe stretched 2 sizes small over my head. 
I am as safe as one can be clinging to the outside of a steel wrapped, gas burning explosion that seems to be in a constant struggle to forget that it wants o be a jet plane rather than a motor bike. I barrel up to Pantai Mas through the mist covered mountaintops of an active volcano, meditating on the poetry of torque juxtaposed against inertia, while maintaining 100 kmh.

I diverge, ask forgiveness, it is the lifestyle described that contributes to the constantly careening trajectory of my stories where there always seems too much information to convey in words but, here I am, with a healer named Mas Evert (Jro M. Sri Siddhi Mandhi), intent on finding a way back from the edge of what may soon become the total extinction of sleep in my life. I want to be healthy, to be sure of my health before trying to throw my DNA across time in the form of my half of a child together with my wife. To have another chance at finding the answers we all seek, eventually hoping our children will find the way by learning from our mistakes without having to make them themselves (which of course never happens).

I spend the night wrestling without sleeping pills, or to be exact, trying to allow the triple dose of Mas`s organic herbal pills to have their effect. I knew when I took them that I would be in for a rough night, my healer’s message was gentle assurance but I think my relatively healthy appearance belies my underlying psychosis and truly Herculean ability to abuse myself. I ask him for a good book to help me pass the night, arrange for a massage in the morning, sleepless nights always leave me far more worn out and sore than active days.

The night was as I expected. The 10 herbal pills I took gave me perhaps a few minutes of blurred vision, even once or twice enough hope for sleep to actually turn off my reading light but, after tossing and turning, I would eventually return to the book Mas had given me. As the enlightenment of exhaustion came on, the book came to life and its words started to echo in my mind. I remember now the herbs that I took were of the sativa family though Mas assured me they had none of the effects of cannabis. It was a good book. I consumed it wholly in the strange way sleep deprivation can allow. While short-circuiting most of the body’s functions it enhances some spiritual elements internally. I have often experienced sensations I can only call waking dreams, perhaps generated by the mind searching for rest when the body will not succumb. While reading this book I feel certain passages lock into my subconscious, imprint on my soul.

The book ends. With it comes a sadness that arrives at the end of all great reads, fear of never again being able to enjoy that piece of work for the first time, with doubt that another book will ever come along to pull me in so deeply. It makes me want, no need, to find just one more page before sleep, or sunrise, whatever comes first. 
I lie the book down beside my bed as the first rays of morning skip across the Indian Ocean and refract in broken fractals like shards of rainbow spun out of a disco ball across the walls of my room. 
I feel at peace, very unlike the wasted feeling that accompanies most mornings born of sleepless nights. I realize that in reading this good book and being in this sacred place I have done considerably more than waste another night. I feel I have gained knowledge, understanding and embarked on what is, hopefully, the journey to recovery, to the achievement of the peaceful sleep of a man at ease with nature.

I eat with Mas and his family, simple food prepared by hands that care for those who eat it. Even the simplest meals seem to nourish me so much more if they are made with love. After breakfast a blind Balinese priest shows up to work on me and other patients at the clinic. He is old, tiny, dressed all in white, seemingly too frail for the 9 hour bus ride he had made to arrive here this morning to heal people for whatever they choose to pay him. Balinese priests do not ask for money and survive on what is bestowed upon them.

I spend an hour on his massage table. It feels as if time has stopped, his technique is unlike any massage I have ever had. I will say it is healing, but the pain it causes makes me pause before ever asking for it again. In his pinching of subcutaneous fat between the muscles, hard enough to release toxins, I am brought to the edge of tears. Fortunately he speaks no English so cannot understand the curses that bubble up unintentionally from deep within. I believe I now understand Tourette’s Syndrome much better! The peace afterwards is sublime, much in the way that hitting your hand with a hammer feels so good when you stop.

Having briefly rested from my not so relaxing massage, tired though inspired, cautioned by Mas to not leave too soon, I suit up in the aforementioned road amour and set out in the early hours to get back to my lovely wife waiting for me to come home and celebrate our first wedding anniversary. I stand over my bike in my black suit, a cross between the Dark Knight and Buck Rogers, my 1700 cc rocket idles between my legs waiting to unleash its 100 horses of power. I visualize what a hundred horses would look like in front of me. Two wide and fifty deep they would stretch somewhere near half a Km in front of me with steaming flaring nostrils, hoofs beating on the burnt earth beneath, waiting for my command to unleash their fury in unison with such noise that people might believe them to be bewitched, possessed, driven by who knows what manner of demon. My imagination grants me so much pleasure in the privacy of my mind it is often difficult to pause to write it down ….

Then as the first tear comes to my eye I remember a passage from that book that had stuck in my mind. “Be aware of the place where you are brought to tears - that is where your treasure is”. I would stop once more before entering the core of this ride to wipe tears from my eyes, smile to the sky for granting me treasures, whatever they might be. 
I buckle down, focus on just one thing, allowing all other thoughts to recede. Riding a big bike is a meditation of sorts, in the most perfect moments, Satori, transcendent peace occurs for something like second. The road becomes a path to enlightenment, a back door through which one can glimpse perfection in the sacred geometry of a turn or the mathematics of perfect acceleration, the way, if handled right, the bike can allow you to remain perpetually in front of all traffic. 
In the thrill of half flying across unknown terrain, of calculating surfaces and distances, angles and speeds, knowing that there is only one perfect line which feels like god has painted in gold just for me to follow. Other riders will recognize this I believe, those that have gone to the edge and loved it there. If you have not experienced this in some way in life, those moments of true perfection, complete surrender to a single pointed truth that is only in that very moment, then I am sorry for you, though I know we all find different paths to god, be it flying a kite, writing a poem or fighting a good fight.

My ride that day is woven into my memory forever, not for the disaster that would end it, but for the beauty and perfection of every moment that led up to that point. I departed up 2000 meters in barely 10 miles of road twisting into steep, switch back, hair pin turns on the road over Kintimani Volcano from Lovina beach, a steep rise exploding from sea level. I follow early rays of dawn through thick jungle past cascading waterfalls, fields of spice and coffee, small villages with trails leading from roads edge to temples, around kampungs of people who live on the edge of this majestic pass, spend their days working, living and praying above rolling steeps of green that reach to the endless blue ocean that flows below.

I am in my element. I have owned this particular bike less than a month, but have ridden it more than enough to be well acquainted with it. I am enjoying myself. When riding up steep hills gravity helps pull the bike into the road, sticks me to its surface through turns that would not be possible on flat ground. I am not going very fast, in my opinion speed is not the point of good rides, form and style, the control of power is key to those things, power is something my bike offers in refined and perfect measure. Yamaha makes beautiful pianos, fine instruments, music and art goes into all their creations, this bike is their peak achievement. 
I start to go lower and lower through each turn, foot pegs touch the road, kick back beneath my booted foot. I feel the heat of the asphalt through my helmet when I go low enough, then, when it seems impossible that this 300 kg bike with my 100kg added can right itself, all it takes is a microscopic twist in my wrist, centrifugal forces come into play, pulls me and the machine up and out in a perfect arc as one might experience skiing or surfing. I am riding one of the most modern concept bikes on the market through pristine, ancient lands in my space suit, high on sleep deprivation, healing, the inspiration of a good book, the joy of this day of my anniversary.

The road darkens as I reach the highest point and enter clouds, mist surrounds me, by the roadside monkeys sit veiled amongst the over hanging trees watching like mute priests, shrouded in robes of grey hair. The trancelike sound of cicadas rubbing out their deep jungle rhythm reverberates around me. The world unveils this new morning and I, black apparition on growling metal beast, cut a path alongside their perches. The animals have no time to scatter before I pass, they screech deeper into the thicket not from fear of my approach but after the roar of the pipes from my departure. 
I am in a dream, floating over cement paths, flowing through jungle in the unmistakable rhythm of perfection that only nature can produce, on a machine as perfect as any man has made. There are no close calls, no mishap moments, all is as it is supposed to be. I reach the top, stop, look back over the valley through the smoke of volcanic vents as the fast evaporating mist is claimed, each second further, by rising sunlight. Endless shades of green, punctuated by stone temples that pepper these lands, reach to the blue/green of distant sea tapering off into endless blue sky to rejoin the glowing orb that is the source of all. I feel I have been freed from the specter of addiction, somehow shuffled off the cloak of youth that I have held onto for so long, lost the fear of sleeps elusiveness. 
With great appreciation and sublime respect for Mas, and my machine, I begin my decent, an easy straight line of nicely paved roads with views for many Km ahead, next to no traffic.

With no roads intersecting and freshly laid asphalt I decide to open up the bike a bit, no more hairpin turns of unstable road surfaces where even a small patch of gravel or loose stone can lay a bike down. As a rule I never top 100 except on long flat sections of highway with no obstructions. I look at my dashboard briefly to check the time, 11: 11 traveling 92km, is the digital readout. Suddenly another passage from that book sweeps across my mind “its not the going away that men so like but rather the coming home”. I am 30 minutes away from home, my wife, the beginning of a perfect day, our 1st year anniversary, dinner booked at the finest restaurant in Bali, I am finishing the best ride of my life inspired by the events of the previous 24 hours.

Ahead of me is a rock truck full of the limestone of which almost everything in Bali is made. It moves slowly and methodically, as such trucks do going downhill. I move to the outside into the oncoming traffic lane, nothing there, a clear line of sight as far as I can see. I begin a simple pass. Just as I do another smaller truck pulls out from behind an oversized dump truck that is impeding traffic. 
It begins an awkward arc through the same pass as me, I begin decelerating in reaction, look down for a brief second to check my speed, 96 kmh, gearing down, when I looked up microseconds later the smaller truck seems to be closing in on me far too quickly. In what could have been no more than a second but felt like an eternity I realize this truck has no brake lights, is bailing on the pass and trying to fall back behind the bigger truck.

Perhaps it was a pothole I could not see, or an animal by the road that spooked the driver, I will never know. Already in too rapid a controlled skid caused by gearing down too fast, the compression in the engine locks the tires, I plow into the back of the moving truck. The driver did not stay to see the aftermath of my impact, on feeling it he sped away, probably to avoid the fact that he had no brake lights, and, undoubtedly, no license, few people in Bali have them. My forks bend inwards and back, I try to throw my weight backwards to avoid going front end over but then the disc brakes snap and splinter into my front tire, which has the effect of putting a stick into the spokes. I am airborne, flying just behind a moving truck with my beautiful motorcycle struggling to be free of gravity and join my graceful but short-lived aerial maneuver. This is achieved when the front tire jackknifes pushing the handle bar sideways through the gas tank and launching the 300 KG beast into the air behind me where it pivots as it leaves the ground with the thick back tire coming towards me. 
For a second I am part of some spectacular mechanical ballet, a phantasy from Cirque de Soleil that involves a motorbike, rider and truck all following each other on different planes between ground and sky at relatively matched speeds. I am airborne facing down looking backwards at my bike somersaulting through the air only feet behind me. I hear Celtic music that I heard, for no reason, in my prison cell one night. I see minutely detailed images of technicolor layers of a thousand fish in Raja Empat where I swim upside down through blue water. I know I am coming home, but no longer know how far away that is. I see my family, my wife smiling, behind me a gamelan orchestra beats a frantic rhythm over rice paddies, through bamboo forests. For those few microseconds 
I am at ease, in a peaceful place the mind retreats to when life becomes unbearable or perhaps when it believes death is unavoidable. Then, white hot static, a silent impact. My helmet insulates me from the sound of man and bike scraping across asphalt, paint peels away from all sides of my helmet, jarring pain as I slide scraping layers of amour from my suit. Gravity searches for flesh, tumbles me down the highway to segue into a final sharp stab of pain as the 300Kg bike bounces off my body, flattens it enough for me to feel the front of my ribs press against my spine through my lung on the left side. It then continues for 50 meters further than my much lighter and softer body, comes to a stop facing backwards up the road towards me.

I lie in that eerie silence that follows any great crash. I can hear the voices of the 20 or so people that surround me. I understand their words even though I do not speak their language. I remember yet another line from that book “if you listen close enough we all speak one language”. They say “do not touch the foreigner he is dead”. When I rise and walk to my shattered bike, lift it and begin to try and push its carcass from the road, they say “do not touch that foreigner, he is a ghost, he does not know he is dead yet”. 
Then, from nowhere, I hear in perfect English “What is wrong with you? He is alive, help him, take the bike, I will get some water”. Three men take the bike from me while a fourth helps me as I fall to my knees, begins to inspect my body for fractures or breaks. I am shaking with adrenaline, unable to believe I am not at least as shattered as my bike. I check my neck, arms, chest, ribs (very sore there where the bike landed, broken for sure). I check my hips and legs even my feet as the leather and rubber is torn from one boot. Finally I remove my helmet, walk to the steps of a roadside stall, sit down, drink some water while another man puts disinfectant on the one small spot of blood on me, a scrape on my forearm.

“My name is Gede and I have a new car here with which I would be glad to take you to the hospital if you would like”. It is the voice of the man who told the people to help me. I look where he points and there, by the side of the road, stands a brand new car, sparkling clean, waiting as if by appointment to take me away. I thank him and say it seems I am all right, then a coughing fit overtakes me, phlegm the dark red of arterial blood issues from deep in my lungs into the hand with which I politely try to cover my mouth. We make eye contact nervously and I decide to take him up on his offer.

I wonder what drives me to follow through on such big risks, to need to feel that place right before the end. Swim too deep, climb too high, push beyond broken and back again. I am not doing it to look big nor to feel big, quite the opposite, these things, these big things, make me feel small. They allow me access to a net on the edge of existence where I feel infinitesimal, minute in the face of what we know set against the vastness of all that we do not.

I read my words and fear they sound like posturing, bragging rights of a fool who smashes bikes, loses fights, has nightmares both real and imagined and stacks them up like some foolish set of medals that should be pinned to his corpse. They are not this. They are messages floating in bottles, stories of one persons search for something sacred in all the places he can imagine it might be found. Here in these stories lie no answers only what few questions I can garner, as best as I can phrase them.

P.S.

I suppose I left a lot of loose ends in this story, I'm afraid its more than just a story but a piece of a life, like a life it has loose ends. No perfect shapes tied at each end with silver threads but rather memories, shapeless, un-conforming picked, plucked and placed on paper with some amount of disregard for reality but an unflinching dedication to entertaining.

It's 5 months since the accident. Obviously I survived, walked away as battered and bruised as a man can be who can still walk. The silence that followed after that impact was the silence I needed to look inside and see what needed to change. The pain of recovery fuelled the search for what was needed, provided a profound understanding that what was needed was not going to come from anywhere outside.

The bike was ruined, my hundred horse chariot that I rode like Icarus too close to the sun, was, in the end, not a bike at all but a metaphor for a part of myself that needed to be focused elsewhere. I may always be unhinged “too weird to live and too rare to die” as a great man once said, before he crumpled under the weight of his own greatness. I was riding that metaphor too fast and too far in search of sleep and family and a peace that one does not find at 100Km on two wheels tearing over an active Volcano. One finds that peace in the heart, in the home, in the eyes of someone that can show you how to love yourself as much as they love you.

So, to tie up the final threads, the sleeping pills are now mostly gone, the nightmares have passed and when they come they are the type I know are dreams and not the other jarring train wrecks that demand medication. I did it alone, on my own back, the same way I got into them, ultimately it was just a matter of making a choice and sticking with it. 
I wake up now, look into my wife's eyes not tired and depressed from all the chemicals flooding my blood and brain, but naturally bleary eyed and happy to be alive and somewhere beneath the sheets. Deep inside her our first child slowly moves towards us. The kicker is that the things I searched for everywhere else in the world, I have now found in the home that I always left ……